Posts

When Our Workplace Culture Is On Fire

/ /by

“The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don’t need no water let the m-f burn.” –The Bloodhound Gang

At least, that’s the melodic hip-hop mantra many of us have wanted to repetitively belt out at some point in our world of work lives (with an unapologetic emphasis on the unabbreviated curse word, of course).

Not because we’re having so much fun dancing around the water cooler, or in the break room, or the conference room, house music thumping in our heads, but because our workplace culture around has all but burned out our aspirational goals.

Many years ago I worked for a firm with an unsettlingly quiet dragon at the helm, one that erupted at the most seemingly inconsequential things, especially when he felt out of the communication loop of any minute detail of the client services work we delivered week to week.

Most mythic dragons spew toxic flames but usually telegraph their eruptions. Heroes have time to duck and cover, but most of us expendables, however, do not.

But this particular dragon? No telegraphing whatsoever. Nothing but surprise eruption after surprise eruption with the complete “why” context not quite coming clear until after the smoke literally cleared and you were sweeping your own ashes from a dust pan into your cubicle trashcan.

After surviving the first year unscathed, jousting internal “windmills” and ungrateful clients, I was presented the opportunity to travel internationally and work onsite for at least six months with a great client of ours. My excitement was palpable and was exceeded only by my naïve, inquisitive nature.

So I started asking the client questions about where I’d be living and how much my per diem would be each day, and the like.

It seemed to me to be innocuous enough, as did the client, but as soon as the dragon caught wind of my inquiries, my days of being a hero were doomed. Without notice and no more than an hour after my client e-mail exchange, the dragon swooped down the long hallway to where the account managers worked and let loose an ungodly fire that decimated every single cell in my godforsaken soul, something I had never experienced before, nor since.

Damn, let the m-f burn. And burn I did.

I lasted just over 3.5 years in that hardcore culture, never really fitting it. While I learned a lot of valuable lessons, and had sound relationships with many colleagues, some that still exist to this date, when I left there, I never looked back.

I imagined that I was the dragon burning that place to the ground. Over and over and over again. All the while bouncing to the house music, curse words intact.

The quest for all of us is to find a company culture that fits (which is the one that forever eludes us). But mercy me, we must keep working towards the goal of finding, and/or making it, and keeping it. According to Strategy& of PwC, 96% of employees have stated a “culture change” is needed at their company. Only about half of all employees say their leaders treat culture as a priority on a day-to-day basis. Fewer still say culture is effectively managed at their companies.

But culture goes deeper than a workplace flexibility, pizza lunches, ping-pong tables – or international travel to exotic client locales. In fact it should drive most every aspect of business – from customer relations to internal practices. Culture is a living breathing entity in companies and one of the most important drivers.

Today, talent science shows us that we perform better when we’re a fit with our workplace culture. This is the science of using quantifiable data to find and hire employees that will be most engaged with the company, its culture, and therefore contributing more to the bottom line and driving business outcomes.

But when we talked about this on the TalentCulture #TChat Show, we all rediscovered what we already new so very well, and only now we can better analyze it – the fact that there are many, many layers of cultural nuance, driven by leadership as well as every single individual contributor in the organization.

Which is why RoundPegg, a company that increases business performance through applied culture science and employee engagement software, believes we can:

  1. Measure it. The first thing you have to do is to “look in the mirror” and measure the values of everyone in the company, via surveys and assessments. How’s everyone really wired in the organization and why? Personal values are the best predictors of what’s happening in company, but until recently we really didn’t have the powerful combination of modern psychology, computing power and rigorous algorithms.  Now we do.
  2. Analyze it. For example, take a mid-size firm growing rapidly that burned through a huge investment but wasn’t performing. Their board of directors of course found the firm’s lackluster performance less than acceptable and demanded the “righting of the ship.” Internally they thought accountability was the issue, but after measuring the values and analyzing the results, the most challenging issue was really about rules — half wanted rules, structure and discipline, and the other half wanted flexibility and freedom, to be more spontaneous. This was at the real root of their stagnation.
  3. Then change it. Once identified, they realized that communication was at the heart of their rules issue, one that had previously only been paid lip service, if any at all. Over the course of six months clear communication channels were developed and maintained, and the course corrections they made impacted employee development, hiring those who shared the same newly unified values, and improving overall engagement that had immediate and long-term improvements, especially business growth.

Values and engagement aren’t just nice-to-haves, they’re personally vital, and when our workplace culture is on fire from jousting fiery dragons and ungrateful exchanges, it kills our shared values, productive affinity and the business mojo within.

Gathering the right cultural data and analyzing what’s wrong with collective values allows organizations to make the changes that insulate the entire business and keep them somewhat dragon safe.

photo credit: balt-arts via photopin cc

#TChat Recap: The Talent Science Of Cultural Change

/1 Comment/ /by

The Talent Science Of Cultural Change

Every week our #TChat Community takes an in-depth social look at what’s going on in the World of Work. This week was particularly interesting because we discussed how data and analytics are shaping organizational culture. Our guests: Brent Daily, Founder of RoundPegg, employee engagement software that increases business performance through applied culture science; and Natalie Baumgartner, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a specific focus on assessment and additional training in strength-based psychology, know closely how talent science can affect the way employees change their perception about organizational culture. The revolution in HR technology has paved the way for organizations to realize how great company culture rewards them with employee engagement and workplace productivity. Before we can begin to understand the makeup of company culture, we must start to:


You can’t begin to form and understand culture until you know what your employees truly value. You have to learn what matters to them. If you want to walk into an office full of organic creativity and passion, then start by asking the right questions. Begin to:

Melissa is right about listening to employees. She’s also right about getting employees involved in shaping company culture. Who better than employees to understand what their organizational culture looks and feels like? Employees carry with them the data to uncovering what organizational culture should be. Of course:

Yes, data and analytics can help light the way for our talent science. It can shed light on what can’t be seen clearly without technology. It can even shed light on paths we did not know are available for us to take. Great company culture comes from understanding the makeup of employees. It’s not about presenting employees with flashiness and disillusionment of what you’re selling. Employees know what they crave. Brent reminded us that:

The key to realizing what your culture is and what it can be comes from having meaningful conversations with employees. Remember, they carry the data to uncovering what your organizational culture can be. HR technology helps remind us of this, and teaches us to recognize the obvious about company culture. You need to get employees involved in shaping company culture by strategically implementing ways for them to add feedback and grow within the organization. Cultivating culture is a science, not a cheap magic trick. Data and analytics gives us the insights we need to understand our organizations, but it’s finding the will to change is what makes it all worth it.

Want To See The #TChat Replay?


 

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

Thanks again to our guests: Brent Daily, Founder of RoundPegg, employee engagement software that increases business performance through applied culture science; and Natalie Baumgartner, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a specific focus on assessment and additional training in strength-based psychology.

#TChat Events: The Talent Science Of Cultural Change

TChatRadio_logo_020813 #TChat Radio — Are you plugged in to #TChat radio? Did you know you can listen live to ANY of our shows ANY time? Now you know. Click the box to head on over to our channel or listen to The Talent Science Of Cultural Change.

Note To Bloggers: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about trends on the engagement experience?

We welcome your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we may feature it! If you recap #TChat make sure to let us know so we can find you!

Contributor CTA

Save The Date: Wednesday, August 20th!

Join us next week, as we talk about Surviving a Bad Workplace Culture during #TChat Events. The TalentCulture conversation continues daily on #TChat Twitter, in our LinkedIn group, and on our new Google+ community. So join us anytime on your favorite social channels! Passive-Recruiting photo credit: Andrew Morrell Photography via photopin cc

Talent Science: Leveraging Medium Data

/1 Comment/ /by

Big data promises to change the world.

Sometimes, though, medium data can massively move the needle. Particularly when applied to an area that has historically been managed by gut instincts, like talent management.

Bringing ever more data to the human side of business is a natural evolution. Corporations have squeezed nearly every drop of efficiency they can from general ledger, but the line item that comprises the biggest costs has, until recently, not been subjected to the microprocessor’s sharpening stone.

Why? The challenges for people-centric investment decisions are three-fold.

1.  Success is Ill-Defined

Even the biggest brains in the C-suite whom we (RoundPegg) talk to have a very hard time defining what success looks like on the people front.  And it’s not their fault.

It’s the “Curly Challenge.”

Curly, the Jack Palance character in City Slickers, identifies the secret of life by holding up one finger. The secret is just one thing…and what that is, is up to you.

Ultimately, success at the people level is different for every micro-group within the organization. And because these issues have historically been centrally addressed at the macro level, they’re rarely relevant to a majority of the workforce.

2.  Relevance

The researchers who study the human side of business have failed Corporate America.

In an effort to diligently tie their work back to the bottom line, they have relied on quantifying the hundreds of billions of dollars lost via our disengaged workforces, or they look at the improvements made at a single organization. Rarely do they have the data to make their macro or micro insights relatable to your company.

Everyone believes their company is unique and, therefore, what worked at company XYZ won’t necessarily work for them. While there is some truth in this, it’s too often used as excuse to disbelieve and avoid change.

In order to find relevance in the research, organizations are forced to suspend belief and make a transitive leap to justify that investing in people will drive to the bottom line. Historically, there has been a great deal of difficulty involved in measuring human performance, so drawing a tight link from talent management to ROI requires more justification than any other business decision.

3.  Believability

When medium data is applied to human capital decisions, the results can generate improvements so enormous that nobody believes them. We, as employers, have done so little to improve the efficiency of the human dynamic in the workforce that small changes make massive improvements – particularly when multiplied across the entire workforce.

Nobody is used to seeing ROIs with percentages in the hundreds or even thousands, so disbelief is understandable.

As a result, talent leaders are unable to justify investing in human capital initiatives in their organizations.

Talent science is bridging the gap. 

Talent science is simple. It tackles the historical challenges inherent in investing in the human side of business by extracting an ROI using medium data.

Data doesn’t always have to be used in a ‘big’ way to be effective. The new realm of talent science leverages cloud-based infrastructure and increases in processing power to gobble metrics and provide real-time talent management metrics to large organizations.

With talent science you can extract and apply macro and micro metrics to manage every part of your employee lifecycle including pre-hire, development, succession planning and employee engagement.

Pre-hire.

Along with a plethora of startups looking to match candidates to the right company, Google has taken medium data to the next level to debunk the efficacy of their own hiring practices. Their longitudinal study revealed no correlation between GPA and success on the job.

A recent report in the Harvard Business Review by researchers at the University of Minnesota has shown that using even the simplest of algorithms in the hiring process can improve the rate of success on the job by 25 percent.

Medium data will often trump our instincts. This is not to say that we shouldn’t use our guts in the hiring process, but we must be prepared to make more informed decisions. The alternative is to fall victim to repeating the same mistakes we’ve always made and that we are blind to correct.

Development.

Humans are awfully complex, but understanding everyone on an individual level allows managers to tailor their management style to best fit their direct report.

Historically, managers were provided some broad training and left to their own devices. Talent science and the rise of medium data can provide them with actionable insights into who may be at risk of leaving and what the manager can and should do about it.

Succession Planning.

Back to Google. One of the best studies they’ve done looked at what makes their managers successful.  While the results were not terribly earth shattering, it provided an irrefutable framework against which to look at promotions and succession planning. The best and the brightest contributors were no longer the only ones being taken away from what they do best in order to do something they’ve never done, manage people.

Engagement.

The traditional ‘measure and hope’ model of engagement is broken. Being able to overlay disparate pieces of data from the psychological to the demographic allows organizations to go well beyond simply understanding which pockets of the company need attention.

The broader and more intelligent use of data allows organizations to customize action plans based on the inner workings of groups and the insights gleaned from what drives engagement elsewhere.

It’s time for change.

Even the smallest pieces of data are completely changing the game on the talent side. No longer are we solely reliant on the subjectivity and whims of our middle managers to determine success within the organization.

Ultimately, the most powerful component of data is that it strips away the subjective. And, if there is one thing that is consistently over-used, it’s the subjective process when it comes to hiring, promoting and engaging people.

The irony is that data is used to inform nearly every decision in Corporate America these days with the exception of those that, arguably, matter most.

We are living in the Dark Ages when it comes to people decisions. Those who start this process now will be dancing on the graves of their competitors by the time the data Renaissance hits in full force.

(About the Author: A serial ‘intra-preneur,’ Brent Daily has always found ways to create new ventures within existing companies. Brent founded Yahoo! Green and, alongside an amazing team, took it from conceptualization to launch in under 100-days. It remains the most popular environmental site online today. It wasn’t until failing brilliantly in his last job that Brent fully recognized the pain of being a misfit within a company. Nothing existed that would help him ensure that this didn’t happen again if he were to continue working for ‘the man.’ Enter RoundPegg. Brent graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and, at least prior to having two kids, could usually be found road biking through the Colorado mountains.)

photo credit: Daniel E Lee via photopin cc

Talent Science: Leveraging Medium Data

/3 Comments/ /by

Big data promises to change the world.

Sometimes, though, medium data can massively move the needle. Particularly when applied to an area that has historically been managed by gut instincts, like talent management.

Bringing ever more data to the human side of business is a natural evolution. Corporations have squeezed nearly every drop of efficiency they can from general ledger, but the line item that comprises the biggest costs has, until recently, not been subjected to the microprocessor’s sharpening stone.

Why? The challenges for people-centric investment decisions are three-fold.

1.  Success is Ill-Defined

Even the biggest brains in the C-suite whom we (RoundPegg) talk to have a very hard time defining what success looks like on the people front.  And it’s not their fault.

It’s the “Curly Challenge.”

Curly, the Jack Palance character in City Slickers, identifies the secret of life by holding up one finger. The secret is just one thing…and what that is, is up to you.

Ultimately, success at the people level is different for every micro-group within the organization. And because these issues have historically been centrally addressed at the macro level, they’re rarely relevant to a majority of the workforce.

2.  Relevance

The researchers who study the human side of business have failed Corporate America.

In an effort to diligently tie their work back to the bottom line, they have relied on quantifying the hundreds of billions of dollars lost via our disengaged workforces, or they look at the improvements made at a single organization. Rarely do they have the data to make their macro or micro insights relatable to your company.

Everyone believes their company is unique and, therefore, what worked at company XYZ won’t necessarily work for them. While there is some truth in this, it’s too often used as excuse to disbelieve and avoid change.

In order to find relevance in the research, organizations are forced to suspend belief and make a transitive leap to justify that investing in people will drive to the bottom line. Historically, there has been a great deal of difficulty involved in measuring human performance, so drawing a tight link from talent management to ROI requires more justification than any other business decision.

3.  Believability

When medium data is applied to human capital decisions, the results can generate improvements so enormous that nobody believes them. We, as employers, have done so little to improve the efficiency of the human dynamic in the workforce that small changes make massive improvements – particularly when multiplied across the entire workforce.

Nobody is used to seeing ROIs with percentages in the hundreds or even thousands, so disbelief is understandable.

As a result, talent leaders are unable to justify investing in human capital initiatives in their organizations.

Talent science is bridging the gap. 

Talent science is simple. It tackles the historical challenges inherent in investing in the human side of business by extracting an ROI using medium data.

Data doesn’t always have to be used in a ‘big’ way to be effective. The new realm of talent science leverages cloud-based infrastructure and increases in processing power to gobble metrics and provide real-time talent management metrics to large organizations.

With talent science you can extract and apply macro and micro metrics to manage every part of your employee lifecycle including pre-hire, development, succession planning and employee engagement.

Pre-hire.

Along with a plethora of startups looking to match candidates to the right company, Google has taken medium data to the next level to debunk the efficacy of their own hiring practices. Their longitudinal study revealed no correlation between GPA and success on the job.

A recent report in the Harvard Business Review by researchers at the University of Minnesota has shown that using even the simplest of algorithms in the hiring process can improve the rate of success on the job by 25 percent.

Medium data will often trump our instincts. This is not to say that we shouldn’t use our guts in the hiring process, but we must be prepared to make more informed decisions. The alternative is to fall victim to repeating the same mistakes we’ve always made and that we are blind to correct.

Development.

Humans are awfully complex, but understanding everyone on an individual level allows managers to tailor their management style to best fit their direct report.

Historically, managers were provided some broad training and left to their own devices. Talent science and the rise of medium data can provide them with actionable insights into who may be at risk of leaving and what the manager can and should do about it.

Succession Planning.

Back to Google. One of the best studies they’ve done looked at what makes their managers successful.  While the results were not terribly earth shattering, it provided an irrefutable framework against which to look at promotions and succession planning. The best and the brightest contributors were no longer the only ones being taken away from what they do best in order to do something they’ve never done, manage people.

Engagement.

The traditional ‘measure and hope’ model of engagement is broken. Being able to overlay disparate pieces of data from the psychological to the demographic allows organizations to go well beyond simply understanding which pockets of the company need attention.

The broader and more intelligent use of data allows organizations to customize action plans based on the inner workings of groups and the insights gleaned from what drives engagement elsewhere.

It’s time for change.

Even the smallest pieces of data are completely changing the game on the talent side. No longer are we solely reliant on the subjectivity and whims of our middle managers to determine success within the organization.

Ultimately, the most powerful component of data is that it strips away the subjective. And, if there is one thing that is consistently over-used, it’s the subjective process when it comes to hiring, promoting and engaging people.

The irony is that data is used to inform nearly every decision in Corporate America these days with the exception of those that, arguably, matter most.

We are living in the Dark Ages when it comes to people decisions. Those who start this process now will be dancing on the graves of their competitors by the time the data Renaissance hits in full force.

(About the Author: A serial ‘intra-preneur,’ Brent Daily has always found ways to create new ventures within existing companies. Brent founded Yahoo! Green and, alongside an amazing team, took it from conceptualization to launch in under 100-days. It remains the most popular environmental site online today. It wasn’t until failing brilliantly in his last job that Brent fully recognized the pain of being a misfit within a company. Nothing existed that would help him ensure that this didn’t happen again if he were to continue working for ‘the man.’ Enter RoundPegg. Brent graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and, at least prior to having two kids, could usually be found road biking through the Colorado mountains.)

photo credit: Daniel E Lee via photopin cc

Is It Time to Hire Yourself? #TChat Recap

/ /by

(Editorial Note: Talent Science Expert, Dr. Janice Presser, led our community through a week of memorable #TChat events focused on weathering today’s rough employment waters. She adds these parting insights – focused on trends that deserve additional thought by anyone who cares about carving out a career path – or creating new jobs – or hiring creatively. For a list of links to this week’s archived events and resources, look beneath Dr. Janice’s commentary. Thanks!)

I hope we can agree on one thing: unemployment isn’t good for anyone. It’s not just that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, but that long-term unemployment scares all of us, even the currently employed. And that fear erodes our engagement, reduces our productivity, and stifles our innovative spirit.

Entrepreneurs play a major part in driving innovation and a growing economy. According to a study by the Kauffman Foundation (the world’s largest non-profit foundation dedicated to the support of entrepreneurship), entrepreneurs and their startup teams are, and have been, the ONLY source of net new jobs in almost every year since 1977! (The chart below reveals how startups have consistently created new jobs, compared to existing organizations.)

JobsChart Dr JaniceUnfortunately, the balance between jobs disappearing and jobs being created is only part of the problem. Are you trapped in a job that you really don’t fit, or worse, trapped in one that makes you miserable? Without a vibrant job market, getting ‘stuck’ like this has become a serious problem.

My Advice

If you’re entrepreneurial, give your ideas a chance. Organizations that help start-ups are popping up everywhere. Find a way to ‘bootstrap’ your idea with the help of anyone who’s willing to help you – especially if they approach the challenge from directions you haven’t thought of yet.

If you’re in HR, please recognize that resumes are losing their relevance, and work requirements are being transformed. Look to the emerging field of Talent Science for alternatives. For most jobs, understanding how a person ‘teams’ with others is at least as important as current and past employment. (Have you noticed that 401k documents say something like ‘past performance is not a guarantee of future performance”? That’s because it isn’t.)

If you’re looking, resist the temptation to apply for jobs you know you are likely to hate. Take some time to learn how you really want to contribute to the mission of an organization. Then articulate the key points, and communicate them widely. Social media – it’s not just for socializing any more.

– @DrJanice

Speaking of social media – how did the TalentCulture community leverage social channels to address this issue throughout the past week? Check out the resources below:

#TChat Week-in-Review

KevinMatuszak_TalentCulture_G.plushangoutvid

Watch the #TChat Sneak Peek video now…

SUN 2/10
TalentCulture Founder, Meghan M. Biro outlined the need for smarter hiring strategies in her Forbes.com post: Four Reasons Leaders Hire in 3D.

G+ Hangout Video: Sneak peek interview with special #TChat guest Kevin Matuszak (@Tooozy), who talks about his creative #HireKevin campaign to gain a position as the face of Applebee’s.

MON 2/11
#TChat preview post Narrowing the Unemployment Gaps outlined the week’s core theme and questions.

TChatRadio_logo_020813

Listen to the radio show recording now…

TUE 2/12
#TChat Radio Show: Dr. Janice joined radio hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman to discuss core issues and opportunities in today’s job market – and how employers should rethink current recruiting practices for everyone’s benefit.

WED 2/13
#TChat Twitter: Dr. Janice and Kevin Matuszak were on hand again, as #TChat-ters gathered around the Twitter stream to share ideas and opinions about why companies should act more creatively in filling talent gaps, and what unemployed workers can do to move their professional agendas forward. To see highlights from yesterday’s #TChat Twitter forum, watch the Storify slideshow below.

#TChat INSIGHTS Slide Show: “Narrowing the Unemployment Gaps”
[javascript type=”text/javascript” src=”//storify.com/TalentCulture/tchat-insights-narrowing-the-unemployment-gaps.js?template=slideshow”]

Closing Notes & Highlights Slideshow

SPECIAL THANKS: Another shout out to Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute and architect of the underlying technology that powers Teamability™, as well as Kevin Matuszak, the mastermind behind the viral #HireKevin job campaign. You both caused us to think more creatively and carefully about what matters in hiring decisions and processes.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events inspire you to write about hiring job trends, recruiting practices or other workplace issues? We’re happy to share your thoughts. Just post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

NEW LINKEDIN GROUP: Did you hear? We’ve expanded to LinkedIn! Come on over anytime to the TalentCulture – World of Work forum!

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week – we’ll look at the human side of business through a different lens, as we examine the importance of “Brand Humanization – What, Why and How” on #TChat Radio, Tuesday, Feb 19, at 7:30pm ET and on #TChat Twitter Wednesday, Feb. 20, at 7pm ET. Look for details next Monday via @TalentCulture and #TChat.

Until then – we’ll see you on the stream!

Image Credit: Stock.xchn